Chapter Fifty-Two: Bronze-Level Fierce General

The sound of axes slicing through the air echoed—some thirty or forty hand axes hurtled toward the Minotaur. These archers, carrying axes as standard along with their javelins, wielded the era’s most common throwing weapons.

In an instant, more than a dozen axes embedded themselves in Yan Luo’s body. His three-meter-tall frame bristled with axes nailed into his chest. Clamped beneath his arm was a long spear, along with the man impaled upon it. Several wooden spears, each over five meters long, swept across the phalanx, collapsing two more sections. Soldiers, caught by the immense force, were sent flying, landing half-dead and groaning on the ground.

Blood began to flow—but the blood of the Ghost Soldier Minotaur was not red. It was a translucent black liquid.

“It bleeds! The monster bleeds! Infantry, use your spears—stab together!” The leader, Granite, roared.

Some soldiers mustered their courage, aiming their spears at Yan Luo. Sharp tips pierced his skin, lodging in his stone-like muscles. More than a dozen men pressed their spears against the Minotaur, straining as if in a contest of strength. The shafts bent nearly into arcs under the tremendous resistance.

“One man, trying to slay a hundred soldiers—this is starting to wear me down…”

Through accumulated emotion and the possible fusion of failed personas, the one-time explosive transformation granted by the mask was indeed powerful, but power did not mean invincibility. Theoretically, an LV1 World Modulator could not stand against an entire battalion; such strength exceeded all limits.

Moreover, the foundation for transformation was vitality and mental power. Yan Luo, thanks to his primary life gene, had nearly doubled his original health bar, and the Minotaur, whose specialty was strength, consumed mostly vitality during transformation.

With his chest riddled with axes and over ten Macedonian spears pressing against him, along with shield-bearers holding him back, the black blood pouring from the Minotaur’s body was like a waterfall, his life force draining rapidly.

“Roar!”

Yan Luo unleashed another skill: Intimidation. This consumed his mental source, sending a hellish wave of terror into the hearts of every soldier nearby. Many fell to their knees.

Seizing the moment, he summoned Ghostly Weapon Formation. This time, the axes conjured were much smaller than before, conserving energy. The Minotaur stomped, body sinking slightly, and then leaped over several soldiers’ heads.

Yan Luo bounded forward, landing before Granite, the leader. He raised his axe high.

“Don’t kill me! Please, don’t kill me!”

Facing the three-meter-tall, bull-headed monster, the leader of the Macedonian mercenaries desperately shook his head and waved his hands. But Yan Luo’s battle axe fell without hesitation, activating another skill: Execution!

Boom!

It was not a mere execution—it was an explosion. The Minotaur’s immense strength, guided by skill and channeled into his weapon, blasted Granite apart. Flesh and bone shards, mingled with blood, erupted in a gruesome, vivid burst.

From that moment, the outcome was inevitable.

In this era, the death of a general often meant the collapse of his troops. Moreover, Yan Luo was now a Minotaur-like monster; the courage Granite had instilled vanished utterly in the face of his explosive demise. Of the remaining sixty or seventy survivors, despair consumed them.

Yan Luo became a whack-a-mole machine—he swung his axe, crushing each soldier into a bloody pulp with no resistance. A few managed to crawl away, attempting to flee, but he seized Macedonian spears and hurled them, pinning the runners to the ground. In less than five minutes, the once-famous mercenary group—renowned throughout the Kingdom of Macedon, veterans of countless battles—had become history.

The ground was strewn with blood and mutilated flesh, a scene too horrific to bear.

If Yan Luo hadn’t had the mask as his trump card, he, Zhu Xiaoyong, and Wang Dongwei would be the ones lying dead. Furthermore, the mercenaries would have ravaged the nearby Greek settlements.

A flash of light signaled Yan Luo’s return to human form. He could barely stand, his life and mental sources below ten percent. Had the soldiers fought to the death, the outcome would have been entirely different.

It wasn’t that the Minotaur was weak, but Yan Luo’s vitality couldn’t sustain both transformation and injuries—a double drain.

Within his consciousness, the program’s prompt appeared: “You have successfully created and worn the persona mask: Minotaur. Your soul pollution has increased by one. You have shifted slightly toward the Lawful Evil alignment.”

Unlike the Nightmare mask, this time the alignment shifted toward Lawful Evil, not Chaotic Evil.

The program continued:

“This world’s triggered side mission—annihilate the Macedonian battalion—has been completed. Rewards will be settled upon leaving the inner world.”

“You have achieved the milestone: One Against a Hundred—in a historical or historically similar inner world, parallel to the outer world’s history, you have slain over one hundred soldiers single-handedly in a single battle.”

“You have received the title: Bronze-Grade Warrior.”

“When first equipping a title, you may choose a direction to enhance it.”

“Hm?”

Yan Luo noticed that in each world, only one title could be gained, but upon receiving it, there was no prompt to choose between ‘Sage’ and ‘Bronze-Grade Warrior.’ The program explained that legendary titles did not occupy the slot for ordinary titles.

He equipped the Bronze-Grade Warrior, and his consciousness was flooded with prompts.

“This title actually offers so many options?”

Warrior titles, based on milestones—One Against a Hundred, One Against a Thousand, One Against Ten Thousand—grant Bronze, Silver, and Gold-Grade Warrior titles, respectively. At this stage, one can select a weapon specialty: sword, spear, staff, blade, halberd, hook, axe…

For example, with swordsmanship genes: basic swordsmanship → advanced swordsmanship → swordsmanship mastery. If weapon specialty is chosen as ‘sword,’ the Bronze-Grade Warrior automatically gains basic swordsmanship, Silver gains advanced, Gold gains mastery.

The title vanishes when unequipped.

No gene points required; it does not occupy a gene slot!

As Sword Sage would say—basic, advanced, and mastery do not grant instant sword skills, but greatly enhance learning and comprehension, effectively increasing aptitude in the way of the sword.

This alone made the Warrior title immensely valuable.

Even if the Bronze-Grade Warrior lacked the aura of a Bronze Saint, it was still a rare title—unsurprising, since Yan Luo only managed to kill over a hundred soldiers with the persona mask as his cheat. Ordinary low-level Modulators could never accomplish such a feat.

Only those with exceptional combat talents might.

As for One Against a Thousand or Ten Thousand, an LV1 Modulator need not even consider them.

Choosing a weapon specialty, however, proved difficult. Yan Luo now had the Mandarin Duck Blade and Coiling Dragon Staff—one an assassin’s close-range weapon, the other a warrior’s long weapon. Both were excellent choices, but the available types were numerous.

For instance, the halberd, which demonstrates even greater power on the battlefield, or some rare and unwieldy weapons like the axe—the Eight Trigram School’s Meridian Duck Axe, for example. Selecting one, even at the basic level, enabled rapid mastery and familiarity, and with practice, true proficiency could be achieved.